My Nonna (grandma)

This is a selfie she took and I thought it was very appropriate. Her story is very interesting. Her view on life is so amazing. We are italian, so family is the most important thing, but to her, you must be respectful and polite to others at all times. “You never know what they are going through.” To her, the meaning of life is what you make of it. You are given certain opportunities for a reason, do not take it for granted.

My top five strengths, from my greatest to worst, were: achiever, competition, woo, communication, command. Almost all in which fall under the influencing category. This is fairly accurate, considering I do tend to take leadership roles in most cases. I use my achiever strength because I get things done and take charge. I am quite competitive; everyone wants to be the best at something, or everything. Whether that is possible or not is beside the point, I believe it is all about how you improve yourself in the process. My third was woo, which reading more into it, I realized it does somewhat relate to me. I don not necessarily go out of my way to charm people, but I do in fact like to make people happy. I believe that directly relates to my next strength, communication. As far as command goes, I understand why it is in my strengths because I like to take charge and I would like to think I’m pretty good at it. However, sometimes it can be a weakness.

I was not so much surprised with my top five strengths, as I was confused with how they can limit each individual based on responses on a personality test. I do believe they are correct when it comes to being influencing, and the “strengths” they provided do describe me. However, they do not define me. With that said, I shouldn’t limit myself to five strengths. With the top five strengths, they encourage us to work on those top five strengths, and not so much on our “weaknesses.” That’s just encouraging us to take the easy way out. By not working on our “weaknesses,” we are only making them weaker. It is like making the rich, richer and the poor, poorer in society; it is a recipe for disaster in the economy. As for strengths and weaknesses, I think we should all focus on being well rounded individuals, and carry out traits in all categories.